


Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: The Prince of Egypt (1998), תורה | Torah, תנ"ך | Tanakh
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Family, Gen, Guilt, Introspection, Repentance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 22:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10976496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: "So why send me at all? he thinks. Unless this is the punishment—making me bear witness, unable to do anything, while Egypt is hit with divine retribution—just as I did nothing as my people suffered…Take the staff in your hand, Moses. With it you shall do My wonders.So, he is not merely to watch—but to be forced to actually inflict the suffering onto Egypt. Andthen,and onlythen, would be he be forced to watch.  As a punishment, it’s fitting. Poetic, even…and he can’t face it, hecan’t…"Moses, and three moments of God's Poetic Justice.





	Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue

**Author's Note:**

> While writing this has been a thought experiment about the Tanakhic characters, the literature that was in my brain while I was writing this piece was the Prince of Egypt film, and not the biblical text itself. (Which is why I posted it under this pseud and not my other one—YaeL—which is specifically for me writing pieces inspired by the bible.) As such, all revisionism in this piece—Pharaoh's wife adopting Moses instead of his daughter, the amount of talking Moses does, etc.—is the film's, not mine.
> 
> Also, if this seems slightly familiar, it's because I posted it before, a few months ago, then took it down, edited it a bit, and am just re-uploading now.
> 
> Title from Deuteronomy 16:20.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

There was never awe in Egypt. Not for him, anyway. When one grows up in the palace, in the epicenter of the storm that is the glory that is the empire, everything that is supposed to inspire awe—the Pharaoh, the sphinx, the pyramids—become banal. Just father. A formidable man, but a mere man. And all the splendor of the kingdom meant to engender something like awe—just his work. The storm is just the air, just the ground.

Even since coming to Midian, he hasn’t felt awe. Gratitude—such as he had never felt before in his life and certainly not in Egypt—he has in plenty. Appreciation. Contentment. Satisfaction. Some deeper connection to the Heavens and Earth and all the creatures that live beside man. All things unheard of for him in Egypt, all things which are part of his daily experience here. But awe has still alluded him as a concept to grasp both rationally and empirically.

Perhaps this is why when he sees the bush burning but not burning, alight with strange fire that’s not really fire at all, his initial response is confusion. Both at what his eyes are showing him— _what am I looking at and how can it be_ —and what is happening inside him, in his chest and his gut, when he looks upon it. It’s a feeling so utterly foreign, intrusive like an empire, that he wants to step away, to find his wayward sheep and run back to the pasture and to his tent and to Tziporah’s warm embrace, and forget the whole encounter, but he finds he cannot take his eyes off of the sight before him.

He wonders if this is awe.

 _Moses._ It is his own voice, but he is not saying it. And it not in his mind, but distinctly outside of him, beyond him, speaking like a man, but without a man to speak. _Moses._

“Here I am,” he says tentatively, feeling foolish, and feeling above all more of the intrusion in his chest and gut.

 _Take the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground._

“Who are you?” He’s not sure what he wants the answer to be, perhaps Tziporah shaking him awake, telling him that he is dreaming, informing him in anger that he overslept, that his sheep are running amok…

 _I am that I am._

Well, that’s no help at all, and does nothing to quell the building sense of something like terror in him. “I don’t understand.”

_I am the God of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob._

He is stunned, momentarily, drops his staff and hears it fall on the ground with a clunk that resounds in the silence. Then he rushes to comply with the demands, throwing his sandals off his feet with as much haste as he can muster. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—the ancestors of the Hebrews. Out here, away from Egypt, where he cannot hear the whips and see the blood, see the bodies collapsing, it has been easier to forget, to simply not think of the fact…He is a Hebrew. Should have been a slave ( _should have been dead_ ), but was spared both fates by a mother much braver than he has ever been…and grew to be complicit, _grew to be an enactor_ , of the suffering of his own blood. 

And if the God of the Hebrews has come to him, out here, while he is alone, it is clearly to enact justice on him…to snatch his life away as it should have been snatched all those years ago. Or else to inflict the all those years of suffering which he stood and watched for nearly all his life onto _him,_ as is his true birthright, all at once...

So it is a yearning for the specifics—for though he knows what’s going to happen, he wants to know the details before he experiences them—that prompts him to ask, voice-shaking, “What do you want with me?”

 _I have seen the oppression of My People in Egypt and have heard their cry._

Here it comes, he thinks, hearing again the cracks of the whips, closing his eyes and bracing himself for sentencing.

 _So I have come down_ , continues the God of the Hebrews—no, continues _his_ God. _To deliver them out of slavery. To bring them to a good land, a land flowing with milk and honey._

This is not what he expects to hear, this has nothing to do with him, with his past. He has already been delivered, twice, out of Egypt, and if their, _his_ , God intends to do the same for the rest of the people, then he is glad. But he wonders why God is telling him this. Is he to be three-times delivered? Once from death, once from Egypt, and once from divine retribution?

_And, so, unto Pharaoh, I shall send you._

He staggers backward. “Me? Who am I to lead these people? They’ll never believe me—they won’t even listen!”

And why should they? he asks himself.

_I shall teach you what to say._

“But I was their enemy…” he sputters. “I was the prince of Egypt, the son of the man who _slaughtered_ their children. You’ve…” he breathes, feeling an audacity rise up in him that he hasn’t felt since he fled the palace. “You’ve chosen the wrong messenger! How—how can I even _speak_ to these people?!”

And then there is a gust that knocks him to the ground, and his own voice booms in his ears. _WHO MADE MAN’S MOUTH? WHO MADE THE DEAF, THE MUTE, THE SEEING AND THE BLIND? DID NOT I? NOW GO!_

He curls into himself, panting, trembling. God is sparing him because God wants to use him, but God could destroy him in any number of ways at any moment…And he is sure he could face anything that God would inflict on him—forty years’ worth of whipping, hot sun, heavy brick, death, _anything_ —but he does not think he could bear going back to Egypt, could look any of his brethren in the eyes, face what he has done and what he hasn’t…

But then he feels himself be lifted to his feet, embraced. Senses that God knows his thoughts. _Oh, Moses,_ God says. _I shall be with you when you go to the king of Egypt._

He knows that this thought should reassure him, that the presence wrapping itself around him now means to comfort him, stabilize his shaking body and heart. But it serves to strangle, to demonstrate only that he will have an audience other than Pharaoh, (Which will be who? His father? _Rameses_?!) That there really will be no running for him—not this time—that if he wants to avoid God’s wrath, he will do as he is told. 

_But Pharaoh will not listen. So I will stretch out My hand, and smite Egypt with all My wonders._

So why send me at all? he thinks. Unless this is the punishment—making me bear witness, unable to do anything, while Egypt is hit with divine retribution—just as I did nothing as my people suffered….

_Take the staff in your hand, Moses. With it you shall do My wonders._

So, he is not merely to watch—but to be forced to actually inflict the suffering onto Egypt. And _then,_ and only _then_ , would be he be forced to watch. As a punishment, it’s fitting. Poetic, even…and he can’t face it, he _can’t…_

 _I shall be with you, Moses._

It’s encouraging, or it’s a threat. And Moses figures that he shouldn’t waste the energy trying to decide which. He takes a moment more to breathe, gathering the courage that he knows he will need, then rises. 

Preparations need to be made for him to depart.

* * *

He has almost made a break-through with Rameses, he thinks. After nine plagues—rivers of blood, and destroyed crops, dead livestock, frogs, fiery hail that has been terrifying and has destroyed half the city, darkness so deep in sits on the soul—it will finally be over. People have looked at him, _children_ have looked at him with such terror and contempt in their eyes…but at least few have died. At least he can content himself with the fact that there is only a ruined empire, and not much more blood than the transformed Nile on his hands.

(As if the way the children look at him isn’t enough. God being there with him terrifies him, makes him keenly aware that he is being watched, that he is not to leave until he can shepherd the rest of his people out with him…But he is nonetheless grateful that he has God’s presence to cling to, a staff to hold him up when the children look at him terrified.)

But it will all be over. He is certain Rameses is on the cusp of seeing what must be done…until his son enters the room.

“Father, it’s so dark. I’m frightened!” Rameses visibly changes as he walks over to embrace his son, remembering suddenly that it is _Moses_ and the _Hebrews_ and _their God_ who has allowed this to happen, who has frightened his son, and _that_ cannot stand. As if to confirm this, the boy continues, looking venomously at Moses, “Why is _he_ here? Isn’t that the man who did all this?” 

It’s like a knife in Moses’s gut, the boy’s words and the way he says them, heated by the way Rameses stands with his back to him, the sudden coolness in his voice when he speaks again, the realization that they cannot be brothers now, not with everything that Moses has had to do to Egypt on God’s behalf.

And he can’t handle any more. They must be done with this. He begs. Please, Rameses, end this.

“You Hebrews have been nothing but trouble,” Rameses says, coldly. And Moses knows what he is going to say next. 

_Please don’t_ , he thinks desperately.

“My father had the right idea about how to deal with your people!” 

“Rameses…” he says, holding up his hand. _No, Rameses, don’t do this._

“I think it’s time I finished the job!”

“Rameses!” _Believe me, I of all people know God’s Poetic Justice, I know what God will do…_

“And there will be a great cry in all of Egypt such as never has been and never will be again!”

 _No._

He wants to collapse, wants to die before the following morning, because he is sure he will not be able to live on after what is about to happen, would like to be spared the guilt of having to try. He gazes sadly at the boy who would have been his nephew had things been different, and grasps his staff to keep himself upright. “Oh Rameses, you bring this on yourself.”

* * *

He feels the grief of all Egypt pouring out of his him as he collapses against the wall.

He will never get the image out of his mind: Rameses slumped, the lifeless child in his arms. 

Every household in Egypt. The lifeless children in all of their arms.

He sinks against the wall.

 _The staff that did it was in my hands_ , he thinks. _All of that blood is on my hands._

_I understand_ , he thinks. _You’ve turned me into the very thing I was complicit in for all those years. You’ve turned me into Seti._

_Please,_ he begs God, falling on his knees. _Please, I’ve served my sentence. Please, let me go._

He stays there a long while, sobbing, until Miriam finds him, tells him to rise. Reminds him gently that it’s time to go. 

We are all to be free now, her eyes say.

Moses wonders if he will ever be free.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please consider leaving a review!


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